


Bug

by bunnoculars



Category: SHINee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 01:02:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14273550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunnoculars/pseuds/bunnoculars
Summary: There's a bug in the room. That's important.





	Bug

**Author's Note:**

> I am one of those people who thought “The Fly” was a great episode of _Breaking Bad._ This is very loosely inspired by it.

There’s a bug in the room.

Jonghyun only realizes it’s there when Taemin goes silent, and Jonghyun looks up to find him in the middle of completely freaking out. Then it buzzes by Jonghyun’s head, huge, loud, and ugly, the type that’s just asking to get squished. 

And Jonghyun would, but it’s too much energy this early in the morning, and lately he’s been rethinking the whole killing insects thing. And then there’s Taemin. At the moment Jonghyun is rethinking him, too, or at least he’s pretending he is.

In the meantime Taemin figures out how his muscles work again, jumps up from his seat and trods on Kibum’s foot, wrenches a loud, “For fuck’s sake, Taeminnie,” out of him.

Taemin looks at Jonghyun instead.

“It’s the size of your fingernail,” Jonghyun tells him. “It can’t hurt you.”

_So get over it._

He leaves it unsaid, but Taemin knows what he means. He blinks, frowns, then remembers he’s decided he’s mad at Jonghyun, too, and goes back to acting like Jonghyun doesn’t exist. Jonghyun watches the bug instead of him, following it with his eyes until he starts to get dizzy. Then it darts in for a landing on Kibum’s knee, and Kibum waves it away, and it disappears.

“Kill it next time, hyung, come on,” Taemin whines.

“Why should I? If it’s that big it’ll stain,” Kibum retorts, and then softens, looking at him. “It’s okay, Taemin-ah. It’s gone now, same difference.”

“It’s not the same, if it’s gone it’ll be back.”

And then Taemin clams up, stays on his feet, keeps watch. He looks like he’s ready to bolt, but he has nowhere to go. They’re up to film “Everybody” in less than an hour.

Kibum gets bored with Taemin pretty quickly and turns to Jonghyun instead, but Jonghyun doesn’t want to talk, either. He can stare at Taemin all he wants right now and Taemin won’t even notice, so he’s taking advantage. He hasn’t let himself look since yesterday morning, one whole day now.

Kibum notices him looking, though. He makes a corny pun about apples and “sorry” that Jonghyun chooses not to understand, happy to let Kibum make fun of his English instead, but Kibum isn’t that easy.

“There’s this thing called apologizing,” Kibum starts up, ruining everything, because now Jonghyun has to keep his eyes to himself again, in case Taemin’s ears are still working. “If Person A yelled at Person B, and they don’t like getting ignored by Person B, maybe they should try it. Just a thought.”

“I’m sorry you think it’s any of your business,” Jonghyun replies, and it’s petty and stupid enough that Kibum doesn’t bother again. Instead he crosses the room to hang out with Minho, and leaves Jonghyun and Taemin to it.

Jonghyun has nothing to apologize for.

Okay, maybe he does, but Taemin is the one who’s most at fault, he’s the one who should apologize first. Jonghyun just reacted. He’s allowed to react.

He’s allowed to stew.

And then out of nowhere the bug returns. This time it zips past Jonghyun and maybe kind of goes for Taemin. Taemin sees it coming, anyway, and that’s enough. He half-shouts, flinches back, and the couch takes his legs out from under him, sends him down onto the cushions with a whoosh. And all that is whatever, but Taemin catches his fall on Jonghyun’s thigh. His hand lands high enough that Jonghyun’s face heats, his fingers curl into the fabric of Jonghyun’s pants and his palm is warm through to Jonghyun’s skin, but still, Jonghyun is alone. Taemin only has eyes for the bug.

“You don’t think of me at all, do you?”

Taemin’s eyes shoot to his face, because somehow Jonghyun said that out loud. For a couple seconds he’s so embarrassed he can’t speak, can’t even think, before he reads Taemin’s expression, clocks his annoyance, and doesn’t care anymore. He can be jealous of a bug if he wants to be.

Then Taemin says, “I’m not going to answer that, hyung. Stop it,” and he’s gone, off on the other side of the room, and Jonghyun is pretty sure it’s him and not the bug that drove him over there.

Jonghyun might have said it to Taemin before. _You don’t think of me at all._ He might have said it yesterday, after he got done driving drunk people home from the Halloween party and went home himself, to an empty room, no Taemin, no text, no message, nothing. He waited up for hours and hours, well past sunrise, until finally Taemin showed up mid-morning. Maybe Jonghyun shouldn’t have worried about him, maybe Jonghyun should have figured he’d gone off with his friends and gone to sleep himself, maybe Jonghyun shouldn’t have been so upset with Taemin for not telling him, or for staying out, maybe he shouldn’t have said half the things he did, maybe he just shouldn’t have yelled.

Yesterday was their day off, the first one in months. Taemin spent it sleeping off his hangover. Jonghyun spent it not sleeping at all.

They were supposed to spend it together.

Jonghyun hadn’t planned anything major, or anything at all really. He had movie tickets, but if Taemin had wanted to stay in and fuck all day instead, he would have been okay with that. The next time they have a day off, Jonghyun won’t bother. Maybe he won’t put out, either.

All of the sudden Taemin makes this horrible shuddering moan that carries across the room. Jonghyun forgets everything, jerks around to look, but it’s nothing, just the bug. Again. Taemin keeps trying to get people to kill it, but it still likes him better than Jonghyun somehow. Maybe it’s lonely, maybe it’s the only one of its kind. Maybe its girlfriends just aren’t as pretty as Taemin. 

“Don’t worry, hyung will get it for you,” Jingi says.

Jonghyun scoots down, stretches his legs out, gets comfortable. Closes his eyes.

There’s a thud and then a clattering sound. Jingi again, probably. If it’s something trivial, Jingi’s guaranteed to give one hundred ten percent. He never wins when he tries this hard, and maybe the bug is the type that just won’t die.

But nope. Not Jingi, Taemin. Because now Minho’s saying, “Taemin-ah, calm down. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“He’s hurt my stuff already. You’re just lucky my screen didn’t crack, Taeminnie,” Kibum says. “If you have to freak out, do it where you can’t knock anything over.”

Taemin doesn’t reply. Jingi starts to get loud, thwacks and clunks and cut off curses, and Kibum and Minho are back to talking about stuff Jonghyun doesn’t care about, and Taemin’s disappeared from the middle of all this, gone silent.

He’s probably shut down by now. For the rest of them, Taemin’s bug thing is by turns funny and cute and annoying, something to make fun of or put up with, but for Taemin it’s real. Jonghyun doesn’t know how he always lets himself forget that so easily, but now that he’s thinking about it, he can’t really ignore it.

So Jonghyun gives up. Lets himself look again.

Taemin never listens to Jonghyun, but he listened to Kibum this time. He’s in the middle of the room, shifting his weight and huddling his shoulders and twisting his hands together, and he’s gone from trying to look everywhere at once to looking nowhere, staring at the ground. But then maybe he feels Jonghyun’s gaze, because he glances over, and meets Jonghyun’s eyes. Maybe not. Taemin falters, caught out. Taemin might have been looking to him this whole time and Jonghyun didn’t even know.

Jonghyun could just let Jingi take care of it. He could feign indifference. He doesn’t know where it is, when it’ll appear again, but he could wait for the bug to get Taemin again. See who Taemin asks for help this time, sweep in and rescue him from it maybe. Jonghyun’s not going to do any of that.

The couch groans as he gets up, like it’s relieved to finally get rid of him, but whatever. He was tired of it too.

Jonghyun doesn’t know what to say to Taemin, and he’s not sure he wants to talk to him yet, even if it seems like Taemin can’t ignore him, either. Eye contact isn’t helping him think, not at all, so in the end he just takes Taemin’s wrist in his hand and pulls slightly, and when Taemin falls in behind him, Jonghyun breaks the rules and leads him out of the room, and who knew it could be that easy to get out.

The hallway is too loud and the bathroom is too busy, and neither are far enough, so Jonghyun takes Taemin out of the building, too, out to the lot where the Music Core staff comes to smoke. There’s no one there right now, and suddenly it’s just the two of them and the ghost of the night sky.

Taemin slips free of Jonghyun’s grasp right away, and it’s such a small thing, but it makes Jonghyun lonely.

And then suddenly he’s come out with it. “I’m sorry I yelled at you, I’m sorry I was so mean to you.”

“I don’t care about that, hyung,” Taemin replies, so quickly, like he didn’t even have to think, like he wants Jonghyun to say he’s sorry for something else.

Jonghyun won’t guess, but he can’t take much more of this, either. “Then why are you mad at me?”

Taemin frowns at him. “I could ask you the same thing.”

“Taemin-ah.”

“I’m just saying,” Taemin mutters, and then he has nothing else to say to Jonghyun.

Jonghyun thinks maybe that’s because, “ _I_ didn’t stay out all night without letting you know where I was,” and, “ _I_ didn’t spend the night with another guy,” and Taemin knows it.

“No, you just spent the night with drunk girls in sexy mouse costumes.”

Taemin says it quicker than either of them can think, and he’s totally not sorry about it, either. He looks so cute with his mouth scrunched and hands balled up, but he’s watching Jonghyun with narrowed eyes.

Anyway. _What?_

For a couple seconds Jonghyun has no words, and then he’s this close to laughing, and he can’t do that, he really, really can’t, or that’s it, Taemin’s won. He’ll ignore Jonghyun for at least a week, however long it takes Jonghyun to grovel.

“That was my job?” he says carefully. Taemin knows Jonghyun can’t drink, and Taemin knows he’s volunteered as a designated driver at every SM party for the last three years. And besides, “Most of them weren’t even sexy mice, and I wasn’t sexy anything. I was Naruto.”

“A lot of girls at our company like you, hyung, don’t act like you don’t know that. They like you and they were drunk, and you looked cute,” Taemin says. His words bubble up in Jonghyun’s blood, and it’s like he’s halfway between flying and falling. Taemin gets jealous too and this is the first Jonghyun’s heard of it.

And it’s better that Taemin has no idea what he’s doing to him, not when Jonghyun’s trying to stay mad at him, but then Taemin adds sulkily, “And you left me at the party looking stupid.”

“Jingi hyung and Kibummie were there,” Jonghyun manages. He won’t feel bad, and he won’t smile, either.

“I’m not dating them.”

“No, you’re just dating me and Jongin,” Jonghyun retorts. He’s back on earth now.

Taemin looks annoyed. He’s probably tired of having this conversation, but it’s not Jonghyun’s fault that it keeps coming up. Maybe Taemin should stop spending all his free time with Jongin instead of his boyfriend. Jonghyun has never been able to think of a way to suggest as much without coming off as crazy and possessive, and in the meantime he’s told himself that it has to be Taemin’s idea or there’s no point.

But all Taemin has for him right now is, “Jonginnie’s straight, hyung. You do know that, right?”

“You confuse straight guys.”

Jonghyun would know. Taemin confused him for years before he figured himself out.

“We’ve been friends since we were fifteen. That’s a long time to figure things out,” Taemin says flatly, and Jonghyun can’t really disagree with that. And then Taemin scuffs his shoe along the pavement, says to the ground, “Anyway, he knows we’re dating. None of those girls do.”

Taemin’s not wrong.

Up till now Jonghyun has been doing a really good job of convincing himself he’s in the right, but just like that, he decides that if he’s made Taemin feel bad, he probably should feel like shit, too. He thinks Taemin is okay, though, he thinks he can make it up to him without torturing himself first.

“I know we’re dating. That’s enough.”

“So do I,” Taemin says quickly, like they’re still arguing or something. Jonghyun’s done, though.

He lets himself stare, until he knows Taemin can feel his look, but Taemin’s being stubborn, he’s playing hard to get now. Jonghyun finds Taemin’s hand with his own, curls a finger around one of Taemin’s. Taemin lets him get away with it. Somehow Jonghyun is only realizing now what a bad idea it was to talk here, they’ve said all kinds of things, but it’s too late. He doesn’t want to care.

“So go on a date with me tonight,” he says.

Taemin’s eyes flit up to his face. “Fine.”

Jonghyun can work with that.

“We can go for a drive, or a walk, or something. Whatever you’d like.”

“Fine, I said,” Taemin says, but now he’s smiling to himself, so sweetly that Jonghyun’s feelings kind of blow up inside him. It’s too much, but he’s used to that by now, Taemin does it to him a few times a day.

“It’ll be really late, so we can probably get away with holding hands, and I’ll flirt with you,” Jonghyun goes on, watching Taemin. “Just don’t fall for me too hard. Wait till we get home, then you can kiss me.”

Taemin gets this look on his face, and that’s the only warning Jonghyun gets. He doesn’t even know what’s happened before Taemin’s kissed him, there and gone, out in the open, only one door between them and the world they live in. His lips tingle and his face is burning up. They’re at work and Taemin just _kissed_ him.

And now Taemin is smirking at him, too. That leaves Jonghyun with no choice, so he gets ahold of Taemin and kisses it right off his face. And then he has to pull Taemin in against him, has to back him into the wall, too, and by the time Jonghyun realizes he’s not thinking, it’s already too late. Taemin’s tongue is teasing Jonghyun’s lips and his fingers have snuck under Jonghyun’s collar, and he tastes like mint and he smells like spring, and Taemin lets Jonghyun put his hands everywhere, leans into his touch when Jonghyun finds skin.

They might get caught like this. 

They’re going to get caught. 

Someone will come looking for them. Someone will come out here for a smoke break, or to have a good cry, or something. He and Taemin are probably minutes from ruining their lives right now, and Jonghyun never wants to stop, and he isn’t going to, and Taemin won’t let him anyway.

“What. the. fuck.”

Everything inside Jonghyun drops to zero in less than a nanosecond.

His lips are smushed against Taemin’s and they’re eyeball to eyeball, both holding their breath, and Taemin doesn’t push him away and doesn’t let him go, so Jonghyun has to do it. Has to step away from him, and look the end in the face.

It’s just Kibum.

Jonghyun’s legs almost give out, and if he had the strength he’d hit him.

Then he gets his first good look at Kibum’s face, and Jonghyun wants to take it back. He’s terrified for entirely different reasons now.

“I’ve been looking for you two all the fuck over. We have ten fucking minutes left, and what? You’re fucking making out? Did you forget where we are?! Fucking _idiots._ If it hadn’t been me—”

“But it was you, hyung,” Taemin interrupts him.

Kibum’s eyes widen, like he’s either going to explode or laugh, and who knows what would be scarier. Taemin has no fear, though, because he’s Taemin and he never knows better. He pushes off the wall and gets out from behind Jonghyun, trying to tuck his shirt back in. And he’s Taemin and he’s so cute, and Kibum can’t help himself either, his shoulders relax and his lips press into a thin line so he doesn’t smile. Before Jonghyun can do anything, Kibum pulls Taemin to his side, straightening his clothes and throwing Jonghyun a glare over Taemin’s shoulder. This is all Taemin’s fault, but somehow Jonghyun is the bad guy here, and for some reason he can’t even get mad about it.

“What about the bug? Is it gone? Did Jingi hyung kill it?” Taemin is asking as Kibum herds him back inside. Jonghyun barely hears Kibum’s reply before he lets the door swing shut in his face.

“It’s _been_ gone.”

Jonghyun is going to stay out here for a while longer.

If he’s waiting for his body to cool down, he should probably stop thinking about Taemin, the way he looked just now, all the things he’s going to do to him tonight. He shouldn’t be daydreaming, period, shouldn’t be holding out until the moment where he absolutely has to go back in there. He should just get it over with. Doing his best with everything else is the only way he can get to the next time with Taemin, he knows that. It shouldn’t be this hard to separate the parts of his life where he can have Taemin and the parts where he can’t, either, when Taemin is there for all of it, and their feelings never seem to change.

Just one more minute. One more minute to himself, and he’ll go.

All of the sudden something buzzes by Jonghyun’s head. He thinks he’s hearing things, but then he sees it.

Huge, loud, and ugly, just asking to get squished.

A bug.


End file.
